You can get prints of this from my DeviantArt page, just click here!

[People] are afraid to rock the boat in which they hope to drift safely through life’s currents, when, actually, the boat is stuck on a sandbar. They would be better off to rock the boat and try to shake it loose.

-Thomas Szasz

Sailing off the coast of Barbados, we (a group of students studying in the country, mostly from Kansas) snorkeled with sea turtles, and saw coral reefs.  And when we were done, I took a picture of the unfurled sail.  The sun was beautiful, the turtles were awesome, and the coral was, unfortunately, a bit bleached.

I rock my own boat for the same reason Szasz suggests you ought.  Drifting through life, whether you are stuck on a sandbar or not, is quite bland.  I’d rather explore.  I’d rather experience.  I’d rather make an impact.

True, there are times in life where you have set your course and hold to it in the face of the driving rain and swelling surf.  These experiences are sometimes necessary, because certain goals must be reached in a certain manner.  But if you plan everything out, and if you stick to that plan, and if you strive to permit not the slightest danger or uncertainty – then what is the purpose in life once the plan is made?  If one spins the replete story of their life in the prologue, then what use are chapters?

If one is satisfied with that which is merely happened upon, what could possibly be discovered?  One wanderer’s tracks will be naturally followed as the path of least resistance, and over time the experiences will be worn down to nothing new, nothing original.  Every destination will have been photographed and written about.  The best reviews will lay out the perfect choreography and none shall stray.  A life could be pieced together from the discrete happenings, and we would become no better than virtual observers, our skin grown into the couch in which we sit, all our nerve endings fed recordings of others’ lives, by a machine without the indescribable wonder that comes with standing some place, and feeling as if you are the first and only one, and realizing the wonder of the universe that has come together for you at this time and this place.

Be Sociable, Share!

•